By Tommy Hough

In a surprise move, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has opted to reject the long-running Lilac Hills Ranch proposal. Called "unsafe" by Cal Fire San Diego Unit Chief Tony Mecham at today's hearing, and recommended for denial by county staff  in a highly unusual move, Lilac Hills was one of our region's most persistent and durable "zombie projects."

Initially denied by county planners in 2009, and at the ballot box with the defeat of Measure B in 2016, Lilac Hills was a loser with the courts, voters, and fire safety professionals. Hopefully the cycle of approving reckless sprawl developments in fire-prone areas is, at last, reaching an end.

My remarks today before the Board of Supervisors follow:

My name is Tommy Hough, I live in Mira Mesa. I'm the V.P. for policy and former president of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action, and I support the staff recommendation to reject the Lilac Hills development.

In 2016 our organization was active in the effort to defeat what was then Measure B, which was the Lilac Hills ballot measure. As you may recall, it was soundly defeated, as residents throughout the county made it clear, as they did again with Newland Sierra on the primary ballot this March, that sprawl development must not be the future of this county, and is not the highest or best use of the rural areas and open space in our county.

We are not Riverside County, and this county should make it a point of pride to resist the temptation to throw open our wildlands, watersheds, and wildlife corridors to sprawl housing developers as has occurred there. If you take a trip north on the 215 to Perris and head east to Hemet, the signs along the road aren't placed by counties or municipalities, but by sprawl housing developers. You know their names. It's clear who holds sway there. It is not a future we should embrace here.

When I ran for San Diego City Council in 2018, I often spoke about our housing crisis, and cited areas within the district I was running in (District 6) where denser housing is a functional option that would require some tweaks to zoning laws, but would enable residents to live within our already-established urbanized footprint, near transit, and the abundant employment centers in our district in Sorrento Valley, Mira Mesa, and Kearny Mesa.

Furthermore, to claim that any of these homes or housing are truly affordable for average San Diegans, is a gross distortion. Unless we're talking about developer-subsidized, or government-subsidized housing, it will NOT be affordable for the majority of working San Diegans. And housing should not be predicated, anywhere, on the false premise that "affordable" housing at the level this area clearly needs can be achieved by setting aside a required percentage of homes that developers can simply buy their way out of. This is to say nothing of the wildfire danger, and significant greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for new miles traveled to and from manufactured cities in our backcountry like that proposed with Lilac Hills.

It is no longer 1980, and the cycle of approving these reckless developments in fire-prone areas must end. Stop putting citizens in harm's way. There is nothing safe or responsible about this project. Please approve the motion and support the recommendations of staff and county fire in opposition to the Lilac Hills zombie project that was so soundly defeated when it was on the ballot four years ago.

Thank you.

By Tommy Hough

Maxim One:  Everything that Trump comes in contact with, good or bad, innocent or guilty, dies an early death in reputation, career, conscience, or lifespan.

Maxim Two:  If Trump touches or meddles with anything you love or cherish, like our environment or our democratic heritage or humanity in general, it too will die an early, ugly death (see maxim one).

Maxim Three:  Donald Trump is President of the United States, and will continue to inflict maxims one and two on all of us until he is driven from office.

When Ryan Zinke, the most corrupt Secretary of the Interior of our modern era, moved to redraw the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah in 2017, it was an unprecedented act of desecration, and a terrible harbinger for our nation's conservation heritage that will only become more pronounced and destructive should Donald Trump win re-election in November.

Prior to the sheer awfulness of the Trump administration, no president or administration had ever moved, erased, altered, or so violated the set boundaries of parks or monuments, certainly not to facilitate oil and gas interests, thereby undoing the very reason they were established as monuments in the first place: to protect them from environmental destruction and exploitation. Certainly no one has ever even attempted to do so in a manner as transparent and craven as Trump.

But this is an administration that, in three short years, has:

• Pulled out of the Paris climate agreement.
• Lifted bans on trophy hunting, enabling the murder of hibernating bears and big cats in their dens.
• Deregulated deadly pesticides.
• Weakened Obama-era fuel economy rules that made cars and trucks more efficient and less polluting.
• Revoked flood standards accounting for sea level rise.
• Rescinded Clean Water Act protections from streams and wetlands, and narrowed the definition of what's considered a federally-protected waterway.
• Allowed seismic airgun blasts for undersea oil and gas drilling.
• Signed an executive order demanding more aggressive old-growth logging on federal public lands, largely a thing of the past since the implementation of the Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan in 1994.
• Loosened regulations on toxic air pollution.
• Rescinded methane flaring rules.
• Dropped climate change from the list of national security threats.
• Scrapped the Obama-era Clean Power Plan to allow states to set their own carbon emissions standards for coal-fired power plants, which even the Trump EPA said would result in 1,400 more premature deaths by 2030 than the Obama-era plan it replaced.
• Rescinded a federal ban on lead ammunition.
• Allowed food producers to self-regulate.
• Blamed western wildfires on imaginary left-wing terrorist groups.
• Facilitated the wholesale purging of highly-qualified, conscientious staff from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Interior Department, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and dozens of other federal agencies.

That's a partial list, of course.

Dating back to the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and even Abraham Lincoln, the idea of erasing the boundaries of protected places was considered cowardly, reckless, needless, and defiant of well-worn American traditions of conservation, however imperfect they may be from time to time.

One of the more notable, and uglier, exceptions to this was the construction of the O'Shaughnessy Dam along the Tuolumne River at Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park, from 1919 to 1923. Abhorrent as it was, it was voted on in broad daylight as an Act of Congress for maximum culpability, and didn't physically alter the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. But there's no doubt the stress of the Hetch Hetchy tragedy is what killed John Muir.

The lesson was crystal clear: Parks and monuments, intended for the benefit of all Americans, are not placeholders until some other project comes along. The resources protected within them are sacrosanct.

Previously, presidents and politicians understood that areas protected for conservation had often been the subject of frequently intense, long-term campaigns by communities and generations of activists. After all, National Parks and National Monuments don't fall out of the clear blue sky. They are established because committed citizens demand these areas be saved. Long before and long after John Muir, careers and lifetimes have been spent to preserve such places.

Notable instances in California include the campaigns to save surviving ancient Redwoods and end old-growth logging on federal public land, the lengthy effort to preserve the Stanislaus River, the decades-long fight to preserve the wildest expanses of the Mojave Desert, and more recently, the campaign to Save Trestles and stop repeated efforts to build a toll road through the backcountry of San Onofre State Beach along the length of San Mateo Creek.

In erasing the intent, meaning, and boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in 2017, the Trump administration deliberately set a terrible, dangerous precedent, and now they're at it in California as oil exploration (!), i.e. the precursor to drilling, begins at Carrizo Plain National Monument along the border of Kern and San Luis Obispo counties, on the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley.

Established by President Bill Clinton in 2001, the monument was intended to preserve the native grasslands of this otherwise unusual depression along the San Andreas Fault in a "land that time forgot" that explodes into extraordinary springtime wildflower shows, and prevent the same kind destruction wrought by the oil extraction that goes on around it for 50 miles in each direction in a network of Chevron and Shell oil and fracking fields, some of which are the size of cities. Now, like other affected National Monuments, Carrizo Plain faces an uncertain future.

Further north in the Central Valley, Giant Sequoia National Monument in Tulare County was similarly put on notice in 2017, and sold out by that county's own board of supervisors, who applauded the move (!) and even asked Trump to shrink the monument. Sickening.

If we hope to preserve our nation's natural heritage and spirit of preservation – to say nothing of the nation itself – then Donald Trump and his destructive anti-leadership must be soundly defeated and driven from office like the environmental and Constitutional criminal he is.

To use an oil and water example, this president and a healthier planet are simply incompatible. As he has demonstrated on far too many occasions when he has turned American against American and neighbor against neighbor, from his Central Park Five accusations to Charlottesville and Lafayette Square, Trump's lifetime of toxic words, deeds, and destructive rhetoric have revealed zero interest or capable curiosity in crafting a more perfect union or bringing our nation together.

Trump is the toxic darkness that seeks to divide, conquer, and pillage. No amount of light or empty riches will ever satisfy his corrupt heart. In any ordinary era, he would've been a disaster. In the midst of actual crises like a pandemic and unchecked foreign interference in our elections, to say nothing of our nation's social reckoning in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of police, Trump is anathema to democratic traditions (see maxim one).

Staring out into the emptiness from the steps of St. John's Church on June 1st, shortly after he and his pack of jackals followed White House security forces that literally gassed and beat the shit out of citizens gathered along the route, waving a Bible around as a cheap prop for all to see, Trump became the living embodiment of Vishnu in his cruelest form. From the Hindu text of the Bhagavad Gita, it was Trump revealing his soulless, blackened heart to our nation and its people: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."

Plenty of us already knew, of course, long before Trump took the oath of office. That toll continues to be played out on our nation, our people, and our future. On refugees jammed into coronavirus-ridden concentration camps, kept in cages on freezing concrete floors. On families willfully and deliberately separated, tossed into the wind for maximum angst and emotional trauma. On black men and women harassed and murdered by police who turn off body cameras and use chemical weapons not even used in warfare.

​And on our wild refuges of America, heretofore and hopefully left untouched by today's daily Washington psychodramas. Our long national nightmare of Trump continues.

By Tommy Hough with Andrew Meyer

The landmark Endangered Species Act of 1973 that we celebrate today, and which continues to be the gold standard by which threatened wildlife is preserved, wasn't created in a vacuum.

Rather, it was built upon a pair of previous iterations of endangered species policies from 1966 and 1969, both of which began the process of tying the survival of species facing imminent extinction with curtailing the activity of humans to create room for that species to recover in their natural habitat.

Part of the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 called upon Congress to begin authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to "acquire land or interests in land that would further the conservation of these species." Coming two years after the passage of the Wilderness Act, which similarly directed an activist Congress to submit wilderness considerations to the Interior Department, this progressive approach was, ideally, to provide a direct route for activists to contact the Interior Department via their congressperson.

In response, the Interior Department issued their inaugural list of endangered species in 1967, including the grizzly bear, alligator, manatee, and bald eagle, whose numbers had become so depleted by the widespread use of DDT, hunting, and habitat loss that by 1963 only 487 nesting pairs of Bald Eagles remained in the U.S.

By 1969, a more global, holistic view on endangered species and the interconnectedness of wildlife and habitats was emerging, and the 1969 Endangered Species Conservation Act included, for the first time, threatened mollusks and crustaceans in addition to charismatic vertebrates. The key legal term "based on the best scientific and commercial data," also made its first appearance in the 1969 bill, ensuring that science would have final word on policy.

By 1972, conservation policy was proving popular with voters, and with 18-year olds having been given the right to vote the year before with the passage of the 26th Amendment, President Richard Nixon was eager to win that demographic for his re-election campaign. Declaring that current endangered species policy was unclear and "inadequate," Nixon called for a comprehensive streamlining of policy, setting into motion what became the Endangered Species Act that was signed into law on December 28, 1973.

Since that time, the Endangered Species Act has facilitated the recovery of species large and small, and became a catalyst in the modern conservation movement as a means of preventing mining or logging operations in areas deemed critical habitat for endangered species.

One of the most notable examples of this was the Northern Spotted Owl of Pacific Northwest old-growth forests, which saw its numbers plummet as clearcutting of ancient forests in Washington, Oregon, and California reached a frenzied peak in the mid-1980s. Marbled Murrelets, a small, football-shaped seabird that lives in the crowns of old-growth Douglas firs and cedars, similarly saw its numbers collapse as timber operations wiped out habitat in areas which some logging interests casually described as biological "dead zones."

Using the ESA in this case, extractive uses became far more regulated, setting a precedent that still applies today – that endangered species should not be wiped off the face of the earth by humanity's actions, however intentional or accidental they may be.

​Here in San Diego County, we have the responsibility of living with several ESA-listed species, some of which we shared with you this week. Our San Diego National Wildlife Refuge preserves habitat for endangered birds, our regional Multiple Species Conservation Plan (MSCP) was one of the first of its kind and offers a path forward for effective conservation-focused planning, and in tandem with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, our rare birds and other organisms are continuously receiving critical protection at both the state and federal level because of the Endangered Species Act.

​We, and our wild neighbors, benefit from the ESA every single day.

California Least Tern photo by Walker Golder, Texas Audubon

By Tommy Hough and Andrew Meyer

All this week the San Diego Audubon Society has been celebrating Endangered Species Day by highlighting five local birds that benefit from federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections. So far we've featured the Ridgway's Rail, Least Bell's Vireo, and Western Snowy Plover. Today we're highlighting both the Bald and Golden Eagle — and though they may be seldom seen, both are found here in San Diego County.

While the Bald Eagle stands as one of the great success stories of the Endangered Species Act (it was removed from the endangered list in 1995), Golden Eagles haven't been doing as well in San Diego County. In fact, over the last 100 years we've lost more than half of our county's breeding pairs, almost entirely due to sprawl development cutting into and destroying habitat.

Golden Eagles are larger than Bald Eagles, with an average wingspan of five feet, and record wingspans of eight feet or more. They're dark brown with lighter shades on their wingtips, and yellow feathering at the base of the neck. Found throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, the Golden Eagle is one of the world's most widely distributed eagle species.

As a result of its reasonably stable numbers nationally, the Golden Eagle has never been listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or other federal agency, although it was initially earmarked for protection from commercial trapping and hunting as part of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act in 1940.

Despite this early act of preservation, the Golden Eagle saw its numbers decline by mid-century, but it was the Bald Eagle that had become critically endangered by the early 1970s, in part from the widespread use of the "Silent Spring" pesticide DDT, which weakened the integrity of eggs in dozens of bird species.

In many ways, the Bald Eagle's plight enabled passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 in order to save the nation's symbol from extinction. Since the ESA's implementation, the Golden Eagle has similarly benefitted from measures to preserve Bald Eagle numbers. Today, the survival of these magnificent raptors relies on preserving the ecosystems and open spaces that they rely upon for roaming, hunting and nesting.

Phil Lambert, who manages the San Diego Audubon Society's Silverwood Wildlife Sanctuary near Lakeside, saw a Bald Eagle two weeks ago circling above the sanctuary's observation area. Flying about 100 ft. above the oak canopy while being attacked by a resident Red Tailed Hawk, this Bald Eagle sighting was only the sixth at Silverwood since 2011. Prior to that, Bald Eagles weren't even on Silverwood's bird list.

Human activity in the form of climate change, poisoning, collisions with buildings, aircraft, and windmills remain serious threats to eagles, but none is more severe than urbanization and habitat destruction, and declines in the availability of the species' natural prey.

Help This Bird: Bald Eagles are one of the nation's great recovery stories, and the ESA quickly demonstrated its value in helping to facilitate the bird's survival. But there are things we can do now, even without an endangered classification, to prevent Golden Eagles from being decimated in the same way Bald Eagles were in the mid-20th century.

Take a moment to let the San Diego County Board of Supervisors know you want protections enacted for Golden Eagle nesting sites on county land, and that you support a strong Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP) for North County. Today is the last day to do so.

Let your supervisors know you especially support option five in the stakeholder survey that fulfills the county's General Plan goals, makes good on the planning and development that's been undertaken to date, and is the best option for the species covered under the plan, and for habitat connectivity in North County.

Fun Fact: Golden Eagles have the largest territory of any bird species in San Diego County.

By Tommy Hough with Karina Ornelas and Megan Flaherty

With Friday, May 15, marking Endangered Species Day, this week the San Diego Audubon Society is highlighting endangered birds in San Diego County that benefit from the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the resulting protection of habitat. In a number of cases, these endangered birds have seen their numbers rebound and species saved as a result of the ESA, which has regrettably seen a number of enforcement rollbacks over the last three years.

​The Bell's Vireo is a songbird found throughout North America, but its Southern California subspecies, known as the Least Bell's Vireo (Vireo bellii pusillus), was listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1986 due to an ongoing loss of habitat in the region, primarily due to development of riparian habitats in canyons and coastal areas.

Least Bell's Vireo are small birds with short, rounded wings and straight, short bills, with a faint ring around their eyes. Their feathers are mostly gray with paler shades of gray running to white along their bellies. Adult species spend their day in small trees and dense shrubs along rivers and streams, relying on a diet of insects and spiders. Beginning in April, female Least Bell's Vireo lay four eggs up to four times per year, with young birds leaving their nest some 10 to 12 days after hatching.

Unfortunately, Least Bell's Vireo nests are typically found within two feet of the ground, which makes unhatched eggs and chicks particularly vulnerable to predation from cats, raccoons, rats, and coyotes, all of which are found near housing and business developments. Scrub jays, hawks, and snakes are also common natural predators.

Although they've been spotted as far north as Santa Clara County, the extraordinarily biodiverse set of habitats and open space in San Diego County remains home to the greatest number of Least Bell’s Vireo. A substantial number of the county’s population lives in the drainages of Camp Pendleton that make up the Santa Margarita River watershed, and the Otay Valley Regional Park offers some of the best, most accessible visibility opportunities. San Diego Audubon is working with the rangers here to improve habitat to benefit riparian species, as well as local pollinators.

Help This Bird: Since its classification as endangered in 1986, the Least Bell's Vireo population has increased from 291 pairs statewide, to 2,968 pairs in Southern California. But the Least Bell's Vireo needs the verdant riparian habitat of canyons and stream beds in coastal areas to survive. The ESA is capable of stopping or requiring modification of proposed developments in order to preserve habitat for this species, which is essential as their population is still so low that they are not safe from extinction.

Please contact your federal elected official and ask them to support conservation policy in Congress to incentivize coastal wetland protection and restoration for carbon storage in order to help the Least Bell's Vireo.

Fun Fact: As songbirds, the Least Bell's Vireo are known to be chatty and melodic, with male birds often signing up to 15 different varieties of song.

Least Bell's Vireo photo by Andy Reago and Chrissy McClarren, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

By Tommy Hough

When I was running for San Diego City Council in 2018, I knocked on thousands of doors in District 6.

One afternoon, when I was canvassing in Mira Mesa, I stopped by a house on Gold Coast Drive. When I asked the homeowner if there was anything going on in the neighborhood he was concerned about, he led me by the arm from his front door to his front yard, where we were promptly hit by flying gravel as a car drove by at less than 25 miles per hour. "This is my problem," he told me. He wasn't the first.

If you've driven on Gold Coast east of Camino Ruiz over the last dozen years, this anecdote probably doesn't surprise you. ​I first drove along Gold Coast some 17 years ago, shortly after I'd arrived in San Diego as part of the inaugural air staff at FM 94/9. Even then I remember remarking on how atrocious the road was – not just with potholes, but with cracks, gaps, bumps, asphalt patches upon patches, and intersections devolving into gravel pits.

I realize it's difficult to find a smooth drive in San Diego. Every neighborhood has their problem streets, but Gold Coast remains a potholed minefield where motorists are forced to drive like a slow-motion skier on a slalom run to avoid the worst parts, especially around the intersections at Westonhill and San Ramon. While not an unusually long stretch of road, it's a heavily-traveled arterial vital to our community and the commuters who drive to and from work in our city's economic engine every day. Gold Coast needs to be rebuilt now, in conjunction with the rebuild of Parkdale Ave. outlined in the city's Community Improvement Program (CIP) number B17188 (you can find other CIPs in District 6 here).

When I attended an informational meeting at the Mira Mesa Senior Center in the summer of 2018 to learn more about the proposal to rebuild Gold Coast Dr. and Parkdale Ave., the city's chief engineer noted with some amazement how bad Gold Coast had become, going so far as to mention his surprise that it hadn't already been rebuilt.

Again, no surprise on our end. Longtime Mira Mesa residents know the roadbed of Gold Coast Dr. and others were built quickly and on the cheap in the early 1970s, and failed long ago from a clear intrusion of water, bad drainage, and loose soils. All of these factors, plus the fact that much of Mira Mesa was rapidly, and unecologically, built upon naturally occurring vernal pools at the time of rapid construction beginning in 1970, have conspired to make Mira Mesa roads notoriously bad. But Gold Coast, one of the most heavily-used arterials in the community, has become the poster child for civic neglect. I made my case on this point in a Times of San Diego piece in February 2019.

I realize the city is looking at a very lean period over the upcoming months, maybe even years, due to the loss of tourism, TOT taxes, and convention revenue from the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty over Proposition B, but it's critical the Capital Improvement Program B-17188 to rebuild Gold Coast Drive from Thanksgiving Lane to Camino Ruiz, and Parkdale Ave. from Mira Mesa Blvd. to Northrup Drive, be funded and moved forward as a priority in the 2021 budget. The decaying streets affect my neighbors' property values, even beyond the flying gravel, and puts extraordinary wear and tear on my neighbors' cars that can cost thousands of dollars a year to stay ahead of.

​And it isn't just the residents. MTS buses use the otherwise narrow strip of Gold Coast throughout the day, and in normal times under non-pandemic conditions heavy San Diego Unified school buses deliver students to Salk Elementary School on Parkdale, and Wangenheim Middle School via Gold Coast throughout the school year. 

To my earlier point, located as we are between the I-15 and I-805 freeways, our neighborhood streets and arterials like Mira Mesa Blvd., Capricorn, Flanders, Bootes, and Gold Coast bear the brunt of the daily nine-to-five commuter traffic as workers head to and from tech centers like Sorrento Valley and western Mira Mesa. I would ask Mayor Faulconer and San Diego City Council, in this 11th hour ahead of the unveiling of the new fiscal year 2021 budget, that the proposal to rebuild Gold Coast Dr. and Parkdale Ave. be funded and enacted upon, according to the plan for Capital Improvement Program B-17188.

Again, I realize we're in the crosshairs of an impending and likely long-term budget crisis, but hopefully we can address more streets in Mira Mesa and District 6 that need to rebuilt from the ground-up, not slathered over with another layer of asphalt that doesn't fix the underlying problem, like Calle Dario, Jade Coast, Pegasus, Port Royale, Perseus, and others. I'm sure you know of some that could use more than a hug and some TLC. If you agree, do me a favor and please let me know.

By Tommy Hough

I have a layperson interest in seismology, and if I was capable of competently executing math and logarithm formulas, I'm pretty sure I would've been a scientist, perhaps even a geologist or seismologist. But the reality is, as much as I find science fascinating, math has never come easy to me beyond basic arithmetic. I blew the lid off the SATs with my English scores, but my math scores were lurking somewhere near the basement, and I never received much academic encouragement to more fully pursue earth science studies.

Nevertheless, a friend recently asked about a story in the Los Angeles Times detailing how the Garlock Fault in Southern California is experiencing, according to the headline, "unprecedented" movement as the result of the magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 earthquakes near Ridgecrest over the July 4th holiday. My friend also asked whether the Garlock Fault is capable of producing a magnitude 8.0 earthquake, as the newspaper headline indicates. It is, and the L.A. Times story is in fact based on a new study released by Caltech scientists last week.

The Garlock Fault runs east-west across Southern California, essentially from Death Valley National Park at its east end to the Grapevine along I-5 at its west end. The Garlock is unusual because it's an east-west trending fault, and most faults in California tend to run northwest to southeast along larger fault systems like the San Andreas and San Jacinto. Most earthquake faults in San Diego County also follow this alignment.

Geologists have been aware of the Garlock Fault for decades, in part because they see the trace of the fault and the impact it appears to have had on the landscape over time. But there haven't been earthquakes that can be attributed to the Garlock in about 500 years of recorded history, and that includes about 130 years' worth of modern seismology that indicates the fault has simply not been an active geological factor in recent centuries. While the Garlock may have played a role in a magnitude 5.7 earthquake near the town of Mojave in 1992, about two weeks after the big Landers Earthquake to the south near Joshua Tree, no evidence of surface displacement was ever found.

That changed with the magnitude 6.4 quake on July 4th, and the bigger 7.1 quake on July 5th near Ridgecrest. The July 5th quake was the largest to hit California in 20 years, and large earthquakes like those in the Ridgecrest area often have a corresponding effect on other faults. Sometimes nearby faults "loosen up" and move as a result of a big quake, sometimes nearby faults "freeze" and stay locked as the result of a nearby earthquake. Most of the time, nothing happens.

A good way to think of California fault geology is to imagine the state as a big, broken dinner plate that's assembled back together, piece by piece, with a layer of topsoil on it. Some pieces of the broken plate are big chunks while other pieces are small, but they all move relative to one another even when one little piece of the broken plate moves – even a tiny one.

The Garlock Fault runs about 15 miles to the south of Ridgecrest, cutting across U.S. 395 north of Mojave, and when the quakes happened near Ridgecrest this summer many observers initially thought they were on the Garlock. They weren't. Instead, the Ridgecrest quakes were centered in a seismically active area called the Little Lake Fault Zone on a relatively unknown "strike slip" fault, which is a fault that moves horizontally and parallel to a surface fault trace. There are perhaps hundreds of these unmapped faults around the state, some of which may not be visible from the surface. In contrast, it was an undetected "blind thrust" fault, which is a fault at an angle within the earth's crust below the surface,  that was the cause of the magnitude 6.4 Northridge Earthquake in L.A. in 1994.

While the Garlock Fault has historically been unaffected by nearby quakes with either an increase or decrease in stress, the Garlock is now moving, albeit very slowly, for the first time in centuries as a result of the Ridgecrest quakes. That movement, as detailed by the Los Angeles Times story, is a big deal in the Earth Sciences world. In seismology, this kind of slow, barely-detectable movement is called "fault creep," or "creeping."

In 1952, a large portion of Kern County and the southern San Joaquin Valley northeast of the Grapevine was hammered by one of the state's most violent earthquakes. It was a big jolt, bigger than the biggest Ridgecrest quake, with a magnitude of 7.3. The quake and its aftershocks killed a dozen people, but that big earthquake happened on an otherwise little fault called the White Wolf Fault. The White Wolf had been identified and mapped prior to the 1952 earthquake, but no one was particularly familiar with it. The White Wolf is also an east-west trending fault, running parallel to the Garlock to the north, and it's located near the western end of the Garlock, where the Garlock meets the San Andreas Fault at the Grapevine near Tejon Pass. Despite the violent shaking and proximity of the White Wolf Fault to the Garlock and San Andreas, the 1952 Kern County Earthquake didn't seem to have any affect on either of those nearby faults.

Meanwhile, this summer's Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence certainly did affect the Garlock. The depth of the respective quakes may have had something to do with it, another part of the reason the reactivation of the Garlock has become such a compelling story. While a bigger quake 65 years ago did nothing to affect the Garlock, the ones this summer near Ridgecrest rattled it loose. Maybe the Ridgecrest quakes were simply closer to a geologic "sweet spot" for the Garlock where it was "hung up" on rock, perhaps for centuries, and unable to move. Perhaps the Ridgecrest sequences avoided a more destructive quake. Perhaps some other geologic event has now been set in motion.

If you're interested in further layperson reading, there's a seismologist named Susan Hough (a very nice person but no relation) who works at the U.S. Geological Survey. She published a book in 2004 called Finding Fault in California: An Earthquake Tourist's Guide, and it's a handy book to have in the car on road trips or even if you're just driving around L.A., as it points out all kinds of interesting seismic features in the state, some of which you can hike or drive right up to and see for yourself.